School daze: Could you use a $7,500 scholarship?

Suppose you or one of your kids wants to go, or return to college this summer or fall. You or they have the drive, the grades and the credentials. All you are lacking is enough money to fill in some important tuition blanks.

Your budget needs a little transfusion, like funds from an outside source. So you do what? The odds of you winning a $450 million Powerball jackpot are about the same as you being devoured by a newly cloned T-Rex next Sunday afternoon in your backyard — in other words, long. As in slim and none, so that’s pretty much out.

But the odds of getting a no-strings scholarship worth anywhere from $1,000 to $7,500 are much, much better this year, right now, if you are a federal worker looking for help to put yourself or one of your children through college. Suppose there were about 3,000 applicants each year for about 200 scholarships. Now those are pretty good odds, right?

While the rich and famous can buy entry in blue-blooded universities for their offspring, paying tuition for a couple of kids, or yourself, is much tougher. Unless …

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What if there was a fair, as in fighting chance you could get thousands of dollars in no-strings scholarships from a special scholarship fund supported by people like you — current or retired federal employees — or corporations or firms that do a lot of business with the federal people community and like to give back in the form of donations? That’s the mission for the Federal Employees Education and Assistance Fund, a feds-helping-feds charity that is part of the Combined Federal Campaign.

What if FEEA, right now, was offering scholarships from $1,000 to $7,500 this year, and only about 3,000 people, if past is prologue, will apply? Fetch pen and paper, right?

FEEA helps out feds and their families in need following hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, etc. — no strings. Donations to FEEA provided full-ride scholarships to scores of children whose parents or guardians were killed in the Oklahoma City terrorist bombings. One of the children who got a full 4-year scholarship wasn’t born when the attack took place almost 20 years earlier.

To apply for a scholarship, learn more about the application process or volunteer to help FEEA screen scholarship candidates, click here. A video with tips for applicants can be accessed.

FEEA needs a lot of volunteers from all professional sectors and academic fields to help it select from nearly 3,000 applicants each year. All you need is a home computer and 6-10 hours over a 2-3 week period in April/May. If you know someone who would like to volunteer please have them register.

Good luck!

Nearly Useless Factoid

In 1931, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini gifted Cincinnati has a statue replica of Rome’s Lupa Capitolina, or the Capitoline Wolf. The statue depicts the mythological founders of the Eternal City, Romulus and Remus suckling from the wolf that saved them from death. Mussolini gave several statues that year in honor of his 10th year in power, but while other American recipients were cities named after Rome, Cincinnati is named after the ancient military leader and stateman Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.